Valve Considering Bringing Music and Video Content to Steam

According Marketing VP Doug Lombardi, Valve's digital distribution platform may have music and video downloads by the end of the year.

While speaking to Tom's Games, Lombardi shed some light on what new content could be headed to Steam.

"...We're also looking at other types of content like video and music." Lombardi said. "We're definitely having those conversations and meetings, and we're reaching out to folks with other types of digital entertainment. I think before the end of the year, you'll probably see some pilot programs with other digital entertainment on Steam."

Lombardi also mentioned his hopes for Steamworks as a development tool.

"...I don't know if anyone would look at some of the tools in the suite, like copy protection for example, and say 'Oh, I don't need that stuff.' We want people to be able to pick and choose what tools they think are valuable to them. And since we're making Steamworks available for free, we don't have any goals in mind for the number of downloads or anything like that."

Lombardi also took time to defend the state of gaming on the PC and to look forward toward what the future holds for Valve. According to Lombardi, Left 4 Dead should be arriving in the early fall on PC and Xbox 360, but set no date for the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

"We're not going to rush Episode Three." Lombardi said. "In retrospect, the idea of getting a Half-Life 2 episode out every year was too much. We don't want to crank out content. And actually, it's getting to the point where calling them episodes may not be the best thing. Episode 2 was longer than Episode 1 by a few hours. So the content is getting bigger, and the design times are getting longer. We'll be working on Episode 3 sometime soon, but there's no specific road map yet for the game's release."